The Thursday rant #10
This week’s ranter: Please be upstanding for the general pendantry of the The Pedant-General in Ordinary
I Blame the Parents
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”
So quoth your stern and hard-boiled Pedant-General in one of his very first posts.
There is nothing like a good dose of personal responsibility to bring out the libertarian in you, and nothing brings out personal responsibility in you more than having children. Raising children is an expensive, tiring and distracting task but, like most other good things in life, amply repays the effort invested. So far, so non-contentious.
But ask yourself: are we, as a nation, doing the best job we can to ensure that children are brought up in stable, loving homes that they may become productive, law-abiding citizens ready to take the fight for the advancement of mankind to the next generation?
Or have:
* the demands of womens lib – which has put enormous pressure on women to return to work leaving their children to faceless childcare and breaking down the stability that small children so desperately need before the age of five;
* the advent of the ambulance chasers and “Human Rights” lawyers – which divorces adults from responsibility for their own actions in general and the application of “reasonableness” in particular;
* relentless political correctness – which undermines the enlightenment values of reason as the arbiter of men and sees criminal and unpleasant behaviour as the unavoidable result of self-inflicted social deprivation;
* the welfare state – which actively discriminates against parents sticking together to share the task of child-rearing;
* and disastrous trendy teaching methods – don’t get me started on phonics
combined to create a generation of illiterate, semi-feral automatons who do not understand and hence resent the world around them nor have any hope of lifting themselves out of their quagmire and every chance of creating further generations of similarly hopeless cases in their turn?
My thesis is that raising children requires responsibility. The same applies in reverse: intercede between parents and their responsibility towards (and for the actions of) their children and an authoritarian state becomes almost a necessity to keep the rabble in order.
Would you clarify, please, the second point in your bulleted list (concerning the ‘compensation culture’)? Please forgive my lack of comprehension, but I do not understand the application of the concept of reasonableness to the issue of child-rearing.
Examples please:
What political correctness, exactly?
Please demonstrate how social deprivation is “self inflicted”.
What other “trendy” teaching methods do you mean, other than phonics?
How is “women’s lib” (quaint phrase) forcing women back to work? Or is it a fundamental element of the welfare to work system?
How is access to “ambulance chasers” and “human rights” lawyers facilitated say, for the parents of “illiterate, semi-feral automatons” precisely?
Thanks.
Andy,
I would imagine that the P-G means, by “reasonableness”, the concept of being able to settle arguments face to face, via diplomacy, rather than having to resort to a third party, or taking something petty to am extreme. I believe that, should this be what he meant, the application to the rearing of children should be easy enough to understand.
I’m with the P-G: nice one, my saaaaaan! I could answer Justin’s points too, but I’ll give the Gen a chance first…
DK
“relentless political correctness – which undermines the enlightenment values of reason as the arbiter of men and sees criminal and unpleasant behaviour as the unavoidable result of self-inflicted social deprivation”
This appears to be the standard rant against extra-individual causes of crime. However, the rest of your rant makes clear that you believe that there are extra-individual causes of crime. I think that the causes that you identify are the wrong ones, but nevertheless, you identify causes that lie outside the individual criminal.
Indeed, to rail against the claims of extra-individual causes of crime is at the height of unreason, only surpassed when someone holding this position then suggests solutions.
See my letter to Michael Howard, written when he argued something similarly daft: Letter to Howard.
Dk, thanks for patronising me so heavily over what I had thought was a – aha – reasonable question. In my view there’s quite a leap from the wording PG used to your explanation but, nonetheless: do you honestly believe that, rather than solve disputes face to face, people are resorting to the justice system to do it for them? If you give me some examples, I’d be happy to discuss them with you.
Secondly, on the ‘compensation culture’, the fact is that we don’t have one. It’s a bleat. Again, do you really think the Courts – just for the fun of it – are doling out millions to people who have splilled coffee on themselves? You’ll probably start talking about CFAs and that kind of thing – but that argument tends to be made using libel cases in support, and conveniently ignores the everyday, less glamourous but more judicious applications of that costs mechanism.
All,
I am afraid that I am up to my neck in all sorts of stuff: Jarndyce will confirm the timestamp of the email with my rant….
I shall try to return to your comments in detail, but briefly:
Andy,
By abandoning the test of “reasonableness”, I mean the process whereby Jo Schmo twists his ankle on a rocky bit of pavement and ambulance chasers encourage him to look to others – rather than himself – for someone to blame.
Justin,
“Womens Lib (Quaint Phrase)”: Never let it be said that your positively Edwardian Pedant-General is a follower of fashion.
The settlement between the sexes – which was desperately needed in the 1960s and 70s – has possibly not reached yet a stable conclusion. There is no direct force, but more a very pervasive societal pressure: This pressure did not exist pre 1960, and now women have to walk the tightrope (and let’s face it, it still remains largely for women) between childcare and keeping up with a career.
Please demonstrate how social deprivation is “self inflictedâ€Â. Paris riots anyone? How much damage has been done to the property of other residents in the area? Would you employ one of the rioters?
See also here and follow the link to Jane Galt’s discussion on this.
“How is access to “ambulance chasers†and “human rights†lawyers facilitated say, for the parents of “illiterate, semi-feral automatons†precisely?”
Good question. But however it is done, it needs to stop. Contesting an ASBO that bans the wearing of a hoody on the basis that it infringes the ned’s right to express himself is the kind of crap that needs to be unravelled. This would not pass any test of reasonableness prior to the Human Rights (with no attendant responsibilities) Act.
Phonics is not trendy. It is traditional. It also works. It also passes the test of reasonableness. Whole word methods do not. If parents had been doing their job and had been taking an interest in the progress of their children, the damage to our education system would have been stopped in its tracks. See here for more ill-informed ranting.
DK,
Thank you.
Andrew,
I am not finding extra-individual causes of crime. I am finding self-destructive tendencies in our institutions to allow people to kid themselves that they can shirk responsibilities for their own actions. The two are NOT the same. There is nothing about the parlous state of the economy causing hopelessness and despair in here. Changing these conditions will not change the fundamentals that apologists for criminals consider to be the drivers of crime rates.
I am afraid I really have to dash but will be back for more later.
Toodle Pip!
PG
PG, they ARE patently the same thing. You are describing changes in our social system that you argue have increased the crime rate. You have chosen a different set of extra-individual causes to those who choose poverty, etc., but you have chosen extra-individual causes all the same.
More, your refusal to see that this is the structure of your argument baffles me, and leads me to conclude that you must be seriously mentally-impaired. It astounds me that people cling to the notion of the uncaused person, mainly as such a philosophy would leave a person unable to interact with his environment, nevermind begin to understand the actions of others.
To deny extra-individual causes of crime, as PG seems to try to do, would leave us utterly bamboozled by changing crime rates. How can these be understood? Is the nature of people changing? Or is the much more reasonable argument – indeed, the one PG is advancing, despite his vehement denials – that changes in our social environment are the key ‘variables’ here.
PG paints those who identify these extra-individual causes as ‘apologists’ for crime. Nonsense. But then so much of what PG has written here is that.
Finally, it is only if there is extra-individual causes of crime that we can hope to perform any sort of action to reduce crime. And the reverse is true, if we accept that we non-criminals can perform actions that reduce crime, we implicitly acknowledge the extra-individual causes of crime.
PG: thanks for coming back to me, and for explaining what you meant. I have two broad points to make:
1. Respectfully I do not think it is unreasonable for someone to make a claim in the scenario you have described. Whether the claim would succeed is a different matter, and I suggest that the courts have dealt with these cases in the practical and sensible way that courts tend to.
2. The HRA is the manifestation of a hugely commendable wider intention. This totemic quality has led to it being decried (usually with human rights lawyers – getting rich on legal aid (ha!), etc) by those who do not understand what it means and know that those who they are decrying it to probably don’t either. I’m not saying you don’t understand what it means – I can’t tell from what you have said about it – but it seems to me that we had enshrined HR before the HRA and we’ll continue to have them if you repeal it – unless we pull out of Europe entirely (which may be where you’re coming from, ultimately). I still don’t fully understand the link between “reasonableness” and the HRA, which doesn’t really deal in reasonableness but instead asks the Courts to bear certain rights in mind.
3. Poor women, they can’t win. They stay at home, they’re merrily sacrificing the ground gained by the feminist movement. They go to work, they’re consigning the kids to a life of ASBOs and crack. I am sure most/all women just want the best for their kids, don’t they? You have a view, I have a view, but neither of us can be right in every case.
Sorry, three broad points.
PG, on ASBOs, ar you really happy with judicial orders imposed on the basis on unsubstantiated hearsay that need not refer to criminal behaviour (never mind prove it), only anti-social behaviour (this need not be proven either) criminalising (with a 3-year custodial sentence) non-criminal acts (such as wearing an item of clothing)?
Faced with this lunacy, should we not be cheering human rights lawyers.
More, just which human rights do you want to do away with?
Dk, thanks for patronising me so heavily over what I had thought was a – aha – reasonable question.
No problem, mate; it’s a pleasure and comes easily to me.
In my view there’s quite a leap from the wording PG used to your explanation but, nonetheless: do you honestly believe that, rather than solve disputes face to face, people are resorting to the justice system to do it for them? If you give me some examples, I’d be happy to discuss them with you.
I said “a third party”, not the justice system. That includes people such as mediators (an Edinburgh branch of which I designed (and read) a series of training brochures for, some years ago, so I know soemthing of that of which I speak. Or write. Or whatever).
This results in an abnegation of responsibility, which was the P-G’s point.
DK
DK – good hair-splitting. Off point, mediation as practiced by CEDR et al is, to a certain extent, now part of the justice system – given that that there may be costs consequences for parties who don’t submit themselves to mediation at some stage of their dispute in an attempt to avoid court litigation. I did one last week one month from trial, supporting a litigant in person (pro bono) who had been booted out of his home by a housing authority for (broadly speaking, of course) kicking up a fuss about his rights as a tenant. I got him a result, you’ll be disappointed to hear.
To go back to my earlier post, where are your examples? Whether or not you designed mediation manuals, the point remains that the idea of loads of people using third parties of whatever type to resolve simple disputes is b llocks, pure and simple. There are and always have been vexatious litigants around, and the court does an admirable job of slapping them down. In fact the Court does an admirable job of dealing with all kinds of complaints, and I have every confidence that if the hypothetical claimant claiming hurt feelings after tripping on a paving slab came before them, he’s have a costs order made against him quicker than you could say “Daily Mail”. Hence no ‘compensation culture’.
P-G: “relentless political correctness – which undermines the enlightenment values of reason as the arbiter of men and sees criminal and unpleasant behaviour as the unavoidable result of self-inflicted social deprivationâ€Â
AB: “This appears to be the standard rant against extra-individual causes of crime.â€Â
Does it? I cannot see where P-G rules out extra-individual causal effects on individuals. As AB says, “the rest of [P-G’s] rant makes clear that [he] believe[s] that there are extra-individual causes of crime.†Who doesn’t?
It appears rather that he is maintaining that there are also intra-individual causes of crime – i.e., free will, and that ultimately it must come down to one’s own choices. This does not deny that one is unaffected or put at a disadvantage by the social deprivation that surrounds one; indeed, as my good old grandmother used to say, (to paraphrase) it was nice middle-class, power-mad, public-school socialist do-gooding buggers that made improving the chances for the working class more difficult by taking over its responsibilities and making it dependent upon the largesse of nice middle-class, power-mad, public-school socialist do-gooding buggers. But as my good old grandmother also used to say, (to paraphrase) life is tough, get over it, take responsibility for yourself and don’t let the nice middle-class, power-mad, public-school socialist do-gooding buggers take it for you, otherwise you’ll end up their semi-feral pet automata to be prodded and pitied, all for their power-ambitions and jaded moral gratification. There’s some truth in them there words.
Of course, if anyone is making so bold a philosophical postulate as to the non-existence of free will (and as people have taken exception to P-G’s assumption of it, I presume some are), then I expect in the interests of rational consistency that he ought to maintain that neither he nor PG can freely chose his words nor the views that they communicate, which renders any morally-outraged-middle-class-power-mad-public-school-socialist-do-gooding-bugger tone rather absurd. One cannot have one’s cake and eat it; that is unless one is seriously mentally impaired.
Moral outrage is still possible if we deny free-will, Deogolwulf, as even if we do not choose our actions, we certainly still feel the consequences. Thus, people, in a universe of no free-will, are certainly able to be good or bad.
But that is beside the point. My point is this, that intra-individual factors are, by their very nature, not amenable to intervention by others, as, if they are, they fall into the class of the extra-individual causes. Suggesting that women’s lib is to blame for a rise in crime is the same kind of explantion of crime as poverty. It just happens that the former charge is far less sensible than the latter.
hahaha
Phonics is not trendy. It is traditional. It also works. It also passes the test of reasonableness. Whole word methods do not. If parents had been doing their job and had been taking an interest in the progress of their children, the damage to our education system would have been stopped in its tracks.
As I’ve noted on my own blog, the great thing about this rant is that you can repurpose it in five years’ time when phonics is the “trendy politically correct theory” and the Janet & John books are the “traditional method that everybody knows to work” and continue to lambast teachers and parents with nary a pause for breath.
In related news, there is no epidemic of feral uneducated children, so it is unlikely that any of the bullet points above (or anything else) explains why there is.
“The Thursday Rant”: providing a pulpit to people who don’t deserve one.
I am not sure whether it is women’s lib or what that is responsible for the fact that it is seen as impossible, and in many cases is in fact damn nearly so, to raise a family on a single income. I am no economist at all, but it seems to me that the fact that women are generally expected to work must make a difference to unemployment figures, to the acceptability of prices and living standards, and probably some other things that more economically-clued-up people could think of. More women began work during WWII, and continued to do so after the war. Did the increasing of the workforce affect wages? (If wives generally work, then there will be less pressure to provide a family-size wage).
I am thinking of wage-earning work here. Which leads me to wonder what the Industrial Revolution did to family life, since in an agricultural economy women work, but do not have to “leave home” so much to do so. (Pants, I keep thinking of exceptions to everything I say,so I will cite poorer C19 Greater Poland peasants here against myself,where parental absence was a problem, I gather) Is, now, the wage of someone in a not-so-highly-skilled job sufficient to support a wife and children?
Is part of the change that there is so much less to be done on the domestic front? The man hours that are necessary to keep a supply of clean knickers going can be put into scrubbing away with home-made soap and a washboard, or into the purchase of a washing machine, powder and electricity (the hours put into the making of the washing machine being considerably more than those that went into the making of the washing machine). Whatever one unreasonable mother-in-law I know may think, women usually look after the heirs while doing the housework. So if the laundry is to be done by machine and not by hand,the man hours have to be made up somewhere, and if it is by the wife behind a reception desk/in a lawyer’s wig, then the problem is not that mothers work,but that they work outside the home.
So much for the economics. As for the social pressure ekectra. I once for amusement spent an entire five-course-dinner maintaining the position that higher education is a male construct and bad for the female psyche. I am not 100% sure that this is not at least a few percent true. Or perhaps rather, that the career/achievement/self-fulfillment thing has become really the measure of all things,in a way that can cause particular difficulties for women,who are,it seems to me, at least likelyto be physiologically more suited to “staying at home”. Even having a family is often seen as part of the “get the set” of career and self-fulfillment package. And I have a six am train in the morning, so I can’t explain this at amy greater length, but for example, consider the priorities of Jane Austen’s books. Where do careers or any suchlike come into it?
Dunno ’bout the rest of you, but if me and my partner thought that we could get by on 35 hours of paid work a week between us, then we’d find raising our kids a lot easier. Women tend to return to work, not because Claire Short turns up at their back gate with a pitchfork (with her ‘women’s lib’ mates) and evicts them from the kitchen, but because it’s the only way to pay the bloody mortgage.
Exposure to idiot health visitors, Sure Start, and kiddie-registration hasn’t given me a warm glow about NuLabor, that’s for sure, but neither has it prompted me to rail against the evil welfore state. Indeed, having kids actually nipped many of my libertarian instincts in the bud, and has shifted me further towards collectivism, though probably not in the way that PG would understand either of these terms. Like I care.
The usual ‘blame the parents’ nonsense which views parents roles as being to turn out properly functioning citizen-units. It’s amazing that people still argue up and down about this kind of thing when there is still no actual evidence that such different styles of parenting have any long term effect at all on how children turn out!
and disastrous trendy teaching methods – don’t get me started on phonics
I wish you could be persuaded because I’m not clear what you mean. Phonics is a system that was ‘pioneered’ up here by Clackmannanshire Council a couple of years ago yet, as has already been pointed out above, is simply a return to the traditional method that was used when some of us were at school. Were you aware of this and support it, or are you in some way under the impression that this is some faddish innovation warranting a good old Victorian rant?
To put ‘trendy’ and ‘teacher’ in the same sentence usually indicates an oxymoron. The ‘methods’ you refer to were only ‘trendy’ in the 1970s; most teachers thought them stupid at the time and even more do so now. The problem is that we operate under a regime where it is what central and local government and their respective inspections regimes are expecting to see that is the determining factor in how education is delivered in this country – the bad fruits of years of Tory centralisation.
It’s quite amusing that quite so many people seem to think that the toughest schools and classes in this country ever reach a sufficient state of order in which the teaching method used becomes a significant variable in the quality of the education delivered.
Another very brief response – still frantic I’m afraid. Pleased with the heat generated here, even if there is perhaps not as much light as one would like…
Andrew Barlett:
“Moral outrage is still possible if we deny free-will, Deogolwulf, as even if we do not choose our actions, we certainly still feel the consequences. Thus, people, in a universe of no free-will, are certainly able to be good or bad.”
Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.
Without free will you cannot be good or bad. Full Stop. I may feel the effects of your actions and perceive them to be good or bad, but that is different. For example, if you are forced at gunpoint to beat me over the head, you are not being bad: it is the person forcing you to do it that is. Equally, a machine is not “bad” because it does something that causes harm.
This is simple stuff or am I completely missing your point?
dsquared: How helpful.
And on a related note: Shuggy: Both of you: go and read this and the various preceding posts. Phonics is not fashionable. It is a successful method. You will not find me ranting against phonics in 5 years time.
dsquared: “In related news, there is no epidemic of feral uneducated children, so it is unlikely that any of the bullet points above (or anything else) explains why there is.”
Shuggy: “It’s quite amusing that quite so many people seem to think that the toughest schools and classes in this country ever reach a sufficient state of order in which the teaching method used becomes a significant variable in the quality of the education delivered.”
I’m with Shuggy on this one. In fact, I agree with his entire comment, with the exception of one little caveat:
“To put ‘trendy’ and ‘teacher’ in the same sentence usually indicates an oxymoron.”.
You will notice that I didn’t make this error. I said trendy teaching methods.
Not the same thing.
Some of the rest of my post is contentious, but then ranters are only allowed 300 words and it is, well, a rant. I shall try to develop some of the arguments in due course.
Chris Williams: You appear to be confirming Berenike’s stance and, more to point, I agree with most of your comment. What is more, you are confirming my thesis for me rather nicely:
“Indeed, having kids actually nipped many of my libertarian instincts in the bud, and has shifted me further towards collectivism”
It is the role of parents to keep a tight grip on their children until such time as they grow into responsible adults. Parents cannot be really truly libertarian with their children BECAUSE THEY ARE CHILDREN. Children cannot take full responsibility for their actions, ergo they cannot be libertarian. My whole point here is that if parents do not step up to the plate to do the job required to bring up children to be useful members of a free society, the state will have to step in to the detriment of everyone.
Toodle Pip!
P-G
And another thing:
re welfare state in general and dsquared’s “there is no epidemic of feral uneducated children”, try this for size.
The money quote: “None of the panel disagreed strongly with the facts presented by James Bartholomew. It was clear that disagreement stemmed from two fundamentally different worldviews rather than disputing the contemporary effects of the welfare state. Whereas some consider functional illiteracy of 20% to be an indictment of state education and a sufficient reason for its abolition, the panel viewed this failure as room for improvement.”
Whilst I am not suggesting for a moment that we should abolish state education (now there is a topic for a rant if ever there was one), a functional illiteracy rate of 20% is hardly a ringing endorsement. My point is that each and every the parent of each and every one of those 20% of children has signally failed to do his or her job. It is inconceivable that you could fail to notice that your child cannot read by the age of, say, 7 or 8 at the latest and not think that this was a matter of such grave concern that you should start making massive adjustments to your life to get it sorted.
“Moral outrage is still possible if we deny free-will, Deogolwulf, as even if we do not choose our actions, we certainly still feel the consequences. Thus, people, in a universe of no free-will, are certainly able to be good or bad.â€Â
As P-G has already noted, morality entails free will. No free will, no morality.
“there is no epidemic of feral uneducated children”
I would like to live where dsquared lives.
dsquared: “The Thursday Rantâ€Â: providing a pulpit to people who don’t deserve one.
You seem to have form on this sort of behaviour. Perhaps we could repackage your ‘thoughts’ on the Rant from various comment threads into next week’s Rant?
PG, I don’t agree with you. The only reason I didn’t spend time skewering your points 2, 3 and 4 is that others had already done so.
Phonics is not fashionable. It is a successful method. You will not find me ranting against phonics in 5 years time.
oh yes we will
I would like to live where dsquared lives.
Green planet, third from the sun, plenty of room, reliable government statistics.
Perhaps we could repackage your ‘thoughts’ on the Rant from various comment threads into next week’s Rant?
I would hope that you could manage something better than that, although recent evidence is not compelling.
Speaking as a woman who had a successful and enjoyable higher education, predicablty I find the idea that my ‘female psyche’ is not suited to higher education rather offensive. Although I note that berenike seems to have taken this position merely for the purposes of dinner conversation amusement. Rubbish and poppycock. I can’t even be bothered to further argue that one.
And to bring out a tired old feminist argument, why is that conversation about women ‘having it all’ – family, career etc – tend to ignore the fact that men, by default, seem to be able to ‘have it all’ – family, career etc – without there being deep discussion about whether their working away from home leads to feral semi-literate children?
All this talk about parental responsibility, and yet fathers can just do what they always did and there is little or no discussion about their role. All this waffle about “parental” responsibility is focussing on mothers, so don’t try to deny it. The word “father” does not get a single look in in the discussion above, that I can see.
And, by the way, I do not believe that children should always be with mothers in the event of family breakdown, yes, the family courts are unbalanced in that. As the child of a single father for at least some of my teenage life, I can hardly argue otherwise.
Maybe we could talk about parental roles in a rather more even handed fashion chaps? Perhaps we can acknowledge that the recent changes in gender roles, which are certainly still in flux, can lead to benefits and disadvantages to both sexes. Fathers get to be more part of their child’s life (like mothers do)! Mothers get to have a life other than just with their children (like fathers do)!
I once for amusement spent an entire five-course-dinner maintaining the position that higher education is a male construct and bad for the female psyche.
You sound terribly entertaining, Berinike. Could I book you for a kitchen supper in late Jan?
me: “Phonics is not fashionable. It is a successful method. You will not find me ranting against phonics in 5 years time.”
Dsquared: “oh yes we will”
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Looks like dsquared still has not read this or this or this. Never mind. As long as he has got his reliable govt statistics, I’m sure he is happy. I would hate to have him confront a preconception. That wouldn’t do.
Katherine:
See my comment earlier where I said:
“The settlement between the sexes – which was desperately needed in the 1960s and 70s – has possibly not reached yet a stable conclusion. There is no direct force, but more a very pervasive societal pressure: This pressure did not exist pre 1960, and now women have to walk the tightrope (and let’s face it, it still remains largely for women) between childcare and keeping up with a career.”
You will notice that, other than this, I have been extremely careful throughout to refer to “parents” – n.b. the PLURAL – not mothers. My position is that we are in transition. What women have gained (and quite rightly so), men have – as it were, and as you correctly highlight – not yet lost. MY point is that it is the children that have lost out in the middle as a result of our failure to reach a workable settlement for all concerned.
To the rest of you, many apologies: there is a considerable amount of good stuff in all your comments (with the possible exception of dsquared who just won’t read my clearly stated views on phonics). In particular Andy has lots of comment at the top re HRA etc which will take time to answer – time that I do not have. If he would like to email me at thepedantgeneral AT gmail -dot- com I will try to let him know when I have posted in more detail on this, so that we can give this the time it deserves.
Toodle Pip!
PG
“As P-G has already noted, morality entails free will. No free will, no morality.”
Nonsense. You can define morality in such a way as to demand free will, but if you do you really are going to fall down a either a shaft of amorality or the pit of unreason. Either you maintain the existence of a causal univerise, in which case you deny morality, or try to argue for the acausal will, in which case you effectively deny reason.
This does not mean that we should behave as if we do not have free will. Part of the human experience is behaving as if we do. It no more demans this than a belief in that the universe is, in theory, reducible to physics demands we abandon economics, history or sociology.
More, even if we deny free will, we are still capable of defining acts, and in cases, people, as wicked. We acknowledge that the have a will and an experience of that will – and internal life -, we just deny that it is acausal. Rather, in the tradition of reason and rationality, we assert that it is a causal will, even if we find that these causes are not amenable to investigation. But to make recourse to free will as a philosophical concept in understanding action (as opposed to a political concept associated with ‘freedom’ – these are different levels, even kinds of thought) is to play the deus ex machina card, and is no more a part of reason than to say; this is not amenable to explantion, therefore God did it.
Pg – I was referring not just to you but the totality of the comments
“This [either acceptance or denial of free will] does not mean that we should behave as if we do not have free will.â€Â
Now, tell me: in which “tradition of reason and rationality†does such irrationality appear? (I live in dread of the answer.)
“More, even if we deny free will, we are still capable of defining acts, and in cases, people, as wicked.â€Â
We are capable of defining bananas as fishmongers if the perverse will takes us.
“But to make recourse to free will as a philosophical concept in understanding action (as opposed to a political concept associated with ‘freedom’ – these are different levels, even kinds of thought) is to play the deus ex machina card, and is no more a part of reason than to say; this is not amenable to explantion, therefore God did it.
Free will is a philosophical concept. When you call someone wicked or take them morally to task for what they say or do, you are imputing to them the deus ex machina which you find so reprehensible; for you are imputing to them choices in their actions. In doing so, you are presupposing free will. If you are not imputing that they have a choice, or in other words, that they have no free will, then to damn them as wicked even though they are totally determined – even though they are completely caused to act through no fault of their own – makes as much sense as damning a rock as wicked for falling on your toe. I am not demanding belief in free will. I demand only logical consistency from your position, which you have so far failed to provide. The fudge of claiming that somehow it all comes together under a political label is one to which I shall not pay the dignity of attention.
Katherine,
I too have had an enjoyable and successful tertiary education, seven years thereof. And am a woman. So we balance out on this front, and this factor can be discounted in the assessing the relative worth of our contributions. :-)
Deogolwulf and PG are embarassing themselves (and dragging things off topic) with their philosophical ignorance. There is an entire school of thought that claims that determinism and morality are perfectly compatible. It’s called compatibalism, it’s a serious position in philosophy and it’s proponents include many of history’s greatest philosophers such as Spinoza, Russel and Liebniz. The assertion that personal responsibility and determinism are incompatible is a complete fallacy. Furthermore, the embarassingly naive concept of ‘free will’ you are putting forward has been demolished by everyone from Hume to Frankfurt. Indeed many have argued that to say that someone is responsible for something relies on determinism: to claim that events were caused by their actions, their actions by their choices and their choices by their character.
“There is an entire school of thought that claims that determinism and morality are perfectly compatible. It’s called compatibalism, [and] it’s a serious position in philosophy. . . . The assertion that personal responsibility and determinism are incompatible is a complete fallacy.â€Â
No, the assertion that personal responsibility and determinism are incompatible is called incompatibalism and “it’s a serious position in philosophyâ€Â. I do suggest therefore that you try to understand what a fallacy is. One might, however, call it a fallacy to believe that the mere mention of an opposing school of thought renders the one in question “a complete fallacyâ€Â, if such an “argument” were not so obviously stupid.
I am of course well aware of “compatibalismâ€Â, as it is precisely the position against which I have been arguing! I maintain, moreover, that compatibalism is a philosophical fudge in which “many of history’s greatest philosophers†have been involved (and if you don’t understand that “many of history’s greatest philosophers†have been involved in many a philosophical fudge, then you have an “embarrassingly naïve†view of philosophy that does not go beyond a quick read of wikipedia – which is, I suspect, the sum total of your knowledge).
“Indeed many have argued that to say that someone is responsible for something relies on determinism: to claim that events were caused by their actions, their actions by their choices and their choices by their character.â€Â
Some indeed have argued for it – but so what? Many have argued for the existence of God, spirits, etc – but I notice that you have provided no argument for it, principally, I suspect, because you have no argument. Citing that some people have argued for something constitutes a pretty poor argument. But anyway, onto the fudge: what caused their character? If as determinism has it, everything has its cause, and thus necessarily everything must go back to the first cause, then one cannot be held personally responsible for anything (not least for the content of one’s character), because it was caused without one’s will from the very beginning, before one’s very existence. If determinism is true (and that means that everything, not just some things, has its cause), then a will free of cause is false. If free will is true, such that some aspect of our consciousness has the final say, as it were, without cause, then determinism is false. I do not say – nor have I yet said – which is true, only that the two are wholly incompatible.
I suggest you think about it, rather than take other people’s words for it, lest you embarrass yourself again.